


Tender

by darling_dontforgetme



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Coven, American Horror Story: Hotel
Genre: Abuse, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Multi, Other, Physical Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 15:05:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19396633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darling_dontforgetme/pseuds/darling_dontforgetme
Summary: Sometimes we suffer, and sometimes it's nice to have people pull us out of that suffering. Cordelia and Sally help the reader with a flashback and past abuse.





	Tender

A fierce kick to your heart left bruises blossoming like flowers upon your chest. How ironic, that you had once loved him so fiercely with that same organ he was now trying to beat out of you. A large hand grips your hair and yanks you upward, bringing your face up in time for a fist to make contact with the sharp edge of your cheekbone before a harsh slap sends you reeling back toward the floor. As you gasp and scream and fight your way back to safety, you think about your mother, your childhood, about how you got here. How you tried to find solace in strangers because you couldn’t find it in your own home. The lack of love and violent hands and bruises and fractured bones all led to an even more broken romantic relationship. Your mother taught you that love was pain- she wouldn’t hit you if she didn’t love you, she had to tell you how worthless, how stupid you were to build you up strong against a vicious world. All of that pain led to love that only turned back into pain, but it felt like validation, like he wouldn’t pull your hair or try to scratch out your heart if he didn’t truly love you.

“Sweet girl.”

Slumped on the floor, your cheeks are slick with tears, but you are no longer screaming. You thought you loved him, you probably really did at some point, for you hadn’t known the world could be any better- that there was a softer, more gentle kind of love. But you had found it, in the grocery store of all places, and it came in the form of two tender, blonde women with light, safe hands.

“Baby love, it’s okay. We’re right here.”

Something touches your arm and you flinch so hard that your head bumps into the wall beside you, a soft whimper sliding out between your lips. “I- I’m sorry,” you sob, bunching up the fabric of your shirt in your hands. “I’ll be good. I promise I’ll be good.”

“Hey, hey, no. You are good, so good, sweetheart. Look at me.”

You shake your head, recoiling from the slap that always follows disobedience, but it never comes.

“No one will hurt you here. It’s okay. You can open your eyes.”

“I don’t-.” You don’t know what’s happening or where you are, why he hasn’t hit you for insolence.

“Shh, thats okay. You’re alright.’

“I’m sorry.” You don’t know what else to say, what to do to make this better. He is always so drunk and angry, and it is so hard to tiptoe around his moods.

“No, shh, none of that. Just breathe, okay? Everything’s okay.”

“I’m bad,” you wail, and your tears begin falling more fervently, like you are only denying the inevitable. He already knows how terrible you are- your mother told you, and now he knows, too. He can only be patient for so long before the harsh hand of punishment will fall down on you.

“No, no, of course not. You are good; so, so good.”

For the first time, it occurs to you that the voice doesn’t sound like his. It’s softer, female even, and when you think about it, what you’re sitting on doesn’t feel much like the cold tile of the kitchen floor in your shared house. A hand closes gently over your fist and untangles it from your shirt, and despite your anxiety, you don’t fight the contact.

“Pretty love, please look at us.”

You finally do, opening up your eyes to peek up from the floor, and what you find isn’t an angry man at all, far from it. There’s Sally, with her beautiful brown eyes and frizzy hair, and Cordelia, with her soft lips and pretty smiles. They both sit on their knees about a foot away from you, Cordelia’s hands raised up like she wants to reach for you, comfort you, but she doesn’t want to scare you away. Sally is a little more brave, her hand gripped in your own, but no less worried.

“I’m sorry.” You are curled up in the corner of your room in the Coven, the sounds of young witches just background noise against the thumping beat of your heart in your ears. Cordelia slowly reaches out for you, like you are some sort of small, scared child, and maybe you really, truly are. The second her fingers touch your skin you launch your body into hers, settling in her lap and tucking in close against her chest. Sally scoots in around you, squeezing your hand and pressing a kiss to your forehead. This isn’t the first time they have pulled you out of a flashback, and it likely won’t be the last.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for, sweet girl. We just want you to be okay,” Cordelia soothes, stroking her fingers through your tangled hair.

And here, with them, you almost feel it. At least, it’s as close as you’ve ever been. Okay is such a foreign concept, something that hadn’t ever been in your vocabulary until recently. You were drowning in such a dark place with such dark people until they came along, like a sliver of heaven in your own personal hell.

Sally cups your chin and tilts your face up. She smiles softly, tears crinkling in the corners of her own eyes. “Baby, we want to understand. We want to help you, but we can’t do that if we don’t know what’s going on.”

You have never told them. In the nine months the three of you have been together, you have yet to breathe a word about your childhood, your first love, how they have opened your eyes to a whole new world- one without bruises and pain and heartache.

You love how much they touch you, how there will always be a gentle hand at the small of your back, or rubbing your shoulder, or just holding onto your own. It is such a contrast to everything you have ever known; that hands could be soft, tender, nonviolent. But despite their reassuring fingers, your body still trembles, so you lay your head against Cordelia’s chest and close your eyes, breathing in deeply. “You know how they say we tend to stick with what we know? How people who grow up in abusive households will typically go into an abusive relationship?”

There’s a sharp intake of breath above you, the body below you twitching with the sudden inhalation. You can imagine the look on Delia’s face; one of surprise and sadness and fear. Sally understands heartbreak, the pain that comes along with love and leaving, and you’ve heard enough stories about Fiona to know that Cordelia has suffered, too. Three broken women, coming together with hope for healing and a better future. Just love, love, love. So much love. 

“Oh, honey,” Cordelia consoles, and she squeezes you tighter, like it might help glue your broken pieces back together, like all of her goodness will slither into the cracks of you and push out all of the terrible things you have endured.

You don’t know where to begin. You know now that your childhood and your first relationship were unstable, violent things, but at the time, they were your normal. It’s difficult to discern the difference in love and hate when every ounce of pain you have ever known has grown from love. But it feels like time to tell them, to let them in. After all, they have been so very patient with you. 

“I- I grew up in a home with a single mom, and she- she had been so beaten down by the world. She worked hard, and it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her fault.” Your voice is timid and stuttering, and you hide into the nape of Cordelia’s neck at such a blatant view of your life. You feel naked, like you are putting the most intimate parts of yourself on display.

You tell them about the sound of skin hitting skin, slaps across your face, kicks to your gut, and you roll up your sleeves to show them the burn scars on your arms. You say more than you mean to, like how you can’t bear to see a bottle of bourbon or smell the perfume in the blue bottle from the local department store because of how they will pull you back into the past, back to black eyes and bleeding skin and fear.

“I’m so sorry,” Sally says, looking down at the marks on your arms. “I wish you would have told me.” Your unstable life has given you weird quirks, unusual fears- cigarettes to be one, but you don’t want Sally to change herself to accommodate you. You had screamed the first time you saw her smoking, screamed and dropped your body into a crouch, hands coming up to protect your head against a threat that no longer existed. Sweet, sweet Sally, always so kind and protective of the ones she loves. You can only imagine what is running through her head, all of the ways to rid the world of all of the people who have hurt you, failed you in some way.

You shake your head, slipping away from Cordelia into your other lover’s lap, arms circling tightly around her midsection, around the ever present leopard print coat. “I don’t want you to change for me, Sally. I like you just as you are, cigarettes and all.”

You kiss her, and then look up to her teary eyes and smile. “I promise, pretty girl. Don’t ever change for me. I just want you to be you, to be Sally.”

As you tuck yourself back against her chest, Sally’s head comes to rest on top of yours, and Cordelia’s arms wrap around the both of you.

“Baby, you know it wasn’t your fault, either?” Cordelia says softly, lips pressed right up against your ear.

You shrug, more or less, knowing that destruction tends to follow behind you. You remember the time your mother compared your love to razor blades, like it was fast and draining, and how anyone who tried to love you would knick themselves if they bothered to come too close. But here, with Sally and Cordelia, your reality felt more like safety scissors, a wall of protection built up around your heart, and the only one to ever get hurt was yourself.

“He didn’t,” you shake your head, unsure of where you are even going with this point. “That’s not what he said. They both, he- he and my mom, they both said I was the problem. I was bad, am. I am bad. I just- it’s me. Everything is my fault.”

You suddenly yank your shirt over your head, pulling back so they can see you, really see you. A shaking finger points at the scars on your chest, where he tried to chisel out your heart with his own hands. The marks are big and ugly, puckered skin crisscrossing over the fragile organ, the home to the awfulness that grows inside you.

Cordelia’s warm hand covers your own, pressing it’s palm up against the physical evidence of your pain. “No,” she says fiercely, eyes blazing with what looks like anger, and you feel like you’ve screwed up because now she is mad at you, too. “No, baby, no. You are not bad, could never be. There is absolutely nothing wrong with who you are because you are the sweetest, most gentle, most beautiful, wonderful girl I have ever seen. Nothing about you is inadequate, or- or defective. They were wrong, sweet girl. They were so wrong about who you are.”

“But it- it has to be me,” you argue, voice growing louder despite your timidity. “I’m the common factor in every situation. I have to be the problem. I have to. I have to be it.”

“No, no, baby.” Sally places her hand over yours and Cordelia’s, still on your chest, still trying to contain the thunder inside of you. Her eyes are set with determination, but somehow they still manage to be soft, still wide open with admiration. “Let us show you what love feels like- real love.”

Reflexively, you stiffen, trying to prepare your body for hard hands and fast kicks and callous words. Love is hard, love is pain, and now they are going to show you that they know you are bad, too.

“No, sweetheart, not like that,” Cordelia promises, letting go of you so that both of her hands can cups your cheeks. “Not like what you’ve known before. Our love is nothing like you have known before.”

You think back to the first time he said he loved you, how it didn’t feel like you had hoped it would. Your heart had plunged at the lack of sincerity in his voice, like he had said it a hundred times already, to a hundred different girls, and you were no more special than the last. It didn’t matter. You didn’t matter. And then when he started hitting you, beating you, throwing words like sharp rocks at your brain, it was like your heart broke and bled all over the bed where there used to be nothing but love.

A soft finger traces down your cheek, pulling you back to Cordelia, to Sally, to the Coven. You blink away tears, but rather than slipping back to where they came from, they begin falling down your cheeks.

“Pretty girl, what are you thinking about?” Sally queries, sweet hands soothing over the marks on your breastbone. She’s studying them, the animalistic manifestation of love gone wrong. 

“You don’t have to hide your heart,” Cordelia encourages. “You can leave it here with us.”

You bite your lip as you look up at both of them, knowing this love is different, better, more gentle, but that doesn’t take away your fear that the world will suddenly flip on you. Kind words will become stabbing, gentle fingers will pinch. You have learned it is better to not share how you are feeling for silence can protect you, can reduce the number of abrasions, both mental and physical, that you wake up with every day. But it has been nine months and Cordelia and Sally have been so delicate with your fragility, never hurting or belittling or bruising. You take a deep breath, mumbling out that you just don’t want to hurt anymore, and soft kisses are instantly pressed to both of your wet cheeks.

“Let us take care of you, babygirl. Please let us help you,” Cordelia asks, Sally nodding along like there’s some sort of invisible thread letting her see the other blonde’s thoughts before she speaks them aloud. “We don’t want to hurt you. We don’t want you to hurt ever again.”

You nod, and it’s hesitant, but then they are both guiding you up and towards the bed. You are pressed into the middle, your girlfriends crawling on either side of you. 

“Show us where you’ve been hurt, sweet love,” Sally says. “Let us heal you.” 

For a while, you just stare at them, and they wait, wait for you to say yes, to give consent like you really have a choice in what happens to you. It has never been your choice before. Finally you push back the hair around your temple, revealing what remains of a candlestick smashing into your skull when you were five.

Cordelia’s lips are the first to press against the damaged skin, the kiss drawn out and delicate, and then Sally takes over, mouth opening so her tongue can scrape lightly over your past injury. 

You continue down your body, pointing out the slash across your arm from a broken bottle when you hadn’t had dinner ready and on the table when he arrived home from work, the marks left from his shoe when he had kicked you so hard in the stomach that you bled. You flip you wrist over to show them the burn from your mother’s curling iron. She had stuck the hot metal against your seven year old skin when you had accidentally burned her while helping her fix her hair. They trail kisses all the way, lips joining together to press side by side over the scribbles covering your heart.

You inhale their scents, Cordelia like lavender and honey and all things soft. Sally still smells like cigarettes, but this time it doesn’t make your heart start running for an exit. Instead, it feels like home, like where you belong; here, with both of these beautiful girls. You feel like everything has stopped, like you have been lost your entire life and the world has finally stilled long enough for you to catch up to yourself.

You are hesitant as they slide your pants down your legs, showing off your own harm against yourself. The marks on your thighs are numerous, stretching all the way from the tops of your knees to the apex of your legs. He told you that they were ugly, made you unlovable, angered him because you were hurting yourself when he was the only one allowed to hurt you. A lot of the cuts are because of him. But they coax your fear out of you, like leading a dog to a bone, lips lingering just a little longer over the more recent ones- the ones still scabbed and healing.

Maybe this love really is different, really is sweet and made up of nothing but tender hands and warm touches. You want to pretend that stars never fall from the sky. There are enough things to wish upon on- dandelions and pennies, eyelashes. You need to know that something is infinite. That you and Sally and Cordelia are not alone, that you have a chance and the universe itself is rooting for you.


End file.
